Blogs About Hurricane Katrina

Currently, my husband and I are among the millions of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. We left Mobile, Alabama, our temporary residence, early Sunday morning and headed for Atlanta, Georgia, to wait out the storm. So I thought I would take a look at who is blogging about Hurricane Katrina.

The Weather Channel has it’s own blog, too, with reports from the storm’s coverage and reporters on the scene. It contains videocasts and some streaming from the reporters in the various locations along Hurricane Katrina’s path.

One enterprising person used WordPress to setup www.deadlykatrina.com, reporting on news and activity around Hurricane Katrina. That is certainly recognizing a need and building a website fast around it.

A search on Technorati shows a huge number of bloggers discussing Hurricane Katrina, but I wanted to find serious stories and commentaries, not just babblers.

Kay Trammell’s Hurricane Update Blog reports on the actual hurricane from the New Orleans area and how the media is responding, appropriate as an assistant professor in mass communication at Louisiana State University. She is blogging regularly, as long as the power lasts, on the storm, its effects, and the media.

Things I’m concerned about it ruining completely:
Preservation Hall, a really old wooden house in the French Quarter which is a museum to jazz history
The Audobon Zoo – how do they protect all those animals?
Tulane University – I went there and I am sure any damage is reparable but still
My friend Chris’ bar, The Saint – I hope he has good insurance on it

Some people who usually blog about other things, suddenly found themselves caught up in the storm, able to evacuate and continue to write about it, or unable to get out and caught in the storm, doing their best to continue updating their blogs as the storm slams around them.

Ernie the Attorney tells of driving for 4 hours to only go 15 miles to evacuate from New Orleans and deciding to return home and just ride the storm out. He’s trying to connect via his cell phone, taking pictures with his cell cam and uploading them to Flickr, but he is sure that the cell towers will get slammed in the storm and the loss of power will make this a limited effort.

SYN/ACK/FIN from Mobile, Alabama, reports that contact was finally made with family in Mobile and “Winds are very high and phones and power are out across Mobile. They tell me that have a small boat ready in case flood waters get too high.”

Other people are finding interesting tie-ins with their blogging interests and Hurricane Katrina. Crossing Wall Street’s God’s Punishing Louisiana, Wall Street hooks religion, Wall Street, and gas and oil prices with Hurricane Katrina: “Hurricane Katrina has made landfall in Louisiana and it’s already causing damage on Wall Street. For the first time ever, crude oil futures soared over $70 a barrel. More than 40% of U.S. oil production operations were closed down this weekend. The stock futures are currently pointing to a weak open today.” In Truth from a Lefty Christain, photographs from the media decorate the site with political, religious, racial, and economic commentary:

I have a problem with a country that only allows those who can afford to evacuate to leave a city in the center-on path of a category five hurricane. If you want to leave the city, you should be able to leave the city and money should not be an issue. The busses were obviously leaving, the city should have said they would pay for the fare of indigent. Now you have nine thousand poor people fit into the superdome, and, according to the article they’ve lost power and back up power only covers lights, not air conditioning. Now….<jeopardy music starts>… Answer: The Color Skin Most likely to be seen in the Superdome because they were did not have the means to get out of the city…. Question: “What is —–“</jeopardy>

As one of the worst, if not the worst, storm to hit the U.S. since at least the 1950s, Hurricane Katrina is fostering widespread citizen efforts to keep the world informed of the storm’s progress. Boing Boing has an extended piece on the blogs and web-based efforts to track Katrina. Current is calling for donated videos.

Webcams for me are a kind of vblogging or video blogging, visual reports from an area of interest. Earthcam’s Bourbon Street, New Orleans webcam comes in and out but continues to work during the storm for a first hand look at the impact on New Orleans famous landmark and tourist attraction.

This site and my other site, Taking Your Camera on the Road, have been thoroughly hit with searches regarding the status of the zoos, aquariums, and other landmarks in the area. A search on the net turned up some information, but remember, you want to have details and pictures. Right now, the people are busy rescuing, saving, and protecting the animals and their protective habitats. They don’t have much time for taking pictures and uploading them to the web. There is just too much to do. More information will be available in time.

For the most part, it looks like the zoos and aquariums in New Orleans suffered little damage, compared to a lot of other areas. The Biloxi aquarium was destroyed but much of it’s large sea life, like the dolphins and seals, were saved.

I have a problem with people blaming “the govt’ for poor people’s problems. How come the people we see on TV managed to keep their guns with them but no food or water? It’s about priorities!!! How about selling your gun for a ticket out of town? How about don’t buy your drugs or cigarettes before the storm & get a way out of town. It is NOT the city’s responsibility to pay for people…that’s how they get in their position anyway, always expecting people to bail them out!!! We are always told here in Mobile that when you go to a shelter take food & water & blankets etc. Then we see a woman on TV complaining b/c the food that was passed out wasn’t hot (DUH…NO POWER maybe?) and that it wasn’t fit to eat…MRE’s are good enough for our servicemen & women but not storm refugees getting FREE FOOD? Come on!!!!! It has absolutely nothing to do with the people’s color of skin, it is their fault they have no sense of priority, no matter what the color of their skin. How about put down the Nike’s you are stealing and pick up a water jug & bread for your family? That’s too sensible though…the Nike’s are a status symbol & good for walking to the abandoned interstate in flood waters. The people shooting at rescue helicopters & raping should be told we have no room for them in our society & they will NOT be relocated to spread their pestilence to other cities in our country. These people have no moral fiber! They won’t let SICK BABIES get out of the hospitals b/c they want the ambulances for their own skin. Give me a break, they should have done what they were told & left. There were buses driving around taking people out of town. If it were me I would have walked to the interstate BEFORE the storm came, not after.

Alf, as someone living down here, I saw hundreds of trucks, repair, and rescue crews lined up and ready at the edge of the storm to move in as fast as they could after the hurricane. Unfortunately, access is limited to roads, water, and sky. Sky transportation and boats can only carry a couple people at a time, not hundreds or thousands, while roads can bring in buses and trucks of help and get people out.

Interstate 10 and Hwy 90 were totally blocked, every road was blocked with downed trees and destroyed buildings all over the roads. Water was rising and flooded everywhere. Access was brutal.

People should have left but they didn’t. Race had nothing to do with anything. I can’t speak for the government, but everything I saw before I evacuated was preparedness. People will do what they will do as they want. This is part of a free country. But part of that freedom comes with responsibility.

I can say that of the government, state, local, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and other volunteer agencies that I have witnessed living here in the 90,000 square miles of disaster from Hurricane Katrina, compounded by Hurricane Rita (Dennis and all the rest over the past two years), they were there helping and doing everything they could in spite of conditions that would intimidate and destroy others.

Until you have visited the area and spent a lot of time there and seen the damage first hand, you cannot understand clearly the level of damage. The media has almost totally ignored Mississippi which was totally destroyed. Homes upon homes upon homes obliterated. It is honestly like hundreds and hundreds of bombs dropped on the area. Even Jefferson Davis’ estate was destroyed, including his newly opened Presidential Library. I saw it this morning. They are working overtime to see it restored, but the damage is very extensive to the structure.

Honestly, a man staying here where I live has been working for FEMA for 40 years and have been through dozens of earthquakes, floods, chemical spills, and 11 hurricanes. He knows disasters. He came back after his first day and broke down in tears. He told me he had never seen devastation like this on any level. “How can we handle this?” he kept saying over and over again.

Everything that could be done, was done. Everything that can be done, is being done. Keep the doing going by continuing to donate and support others who are still there, three months later, serving food to the hungry workers and victims working to restore their lives and homes and businesses. Go visit historical New Orleans as a tourist and have dinner there like I did a couple weeks ago. Volunteer to help and give what you can to those who are helping. New Orleans is getting plenty of attention, but give to Mississippi efforts since their quiet loss is beyond anything in New Orleans. Trust me. Whole towns wiped off the map. Whole neighborhoods don’t exist except as rubble. Mississippi needs your help more than anywhere.

One enterprising person used WordPress to setup http://www.deadlykatrina.com, reporting on news and activity around Hurricane Katrina. That is certainly recognizing a need and building a website fast around it.

If you notice, while enthusiasm for Deadly Katrina was great for a couple days, the last post way September 11. A lot of folks start things with great dreams of success and money, but without the dedication and enthusiasm for the topic, it never lasts. There are dead sites sitting out there all over the place from ill-planned get-rich-quick or fake enthusiasm.

I’m coming out with an article soon on how to blog about disasters and catastrophes (and major news events), so maybe that will be a helpful guide to those who want to blog about such things as they happen around them.

Everything that could be done, was done. Everything that can be done, is being done. Keep the doing going by continuing to donate and support others who are still there, three months later, serving food to the hungry workers and victims working to restore their lives and homes and businesses. Go visit historical New Orleans as a tourist and have dinner there like I did a couple weeks ago. Volunteer to help and give what you can to those who are helping. New Orleans is getting plenty of attention, but give to Mississippi efforts since their quiet loss is beyond anything in New Orleans. Trust me. Whole towns wiped off the map. Whole neighborhoods don’t exist except as rubble. Mississippi needs your help more than anywhere.

what did the governer of new orleans do? why werent the people told when they knew days before? where are the people doing now? people are still suffering still….their is still jobs to be done….where is the u.s we need to come together

[…] We evacuated to Atlanta at the last moment, and found a location with hit and miss WIFI Internet. My first report on the hurricane for this blog was about the many bloggers blogging about Hurricane Katrina. It was an interesting article to write. Not only did I look for those who were still reporting from ground zero, as much as possible, I found a lot of people talking about their memories of New Orleans and their feelings about what was happening, real or imagined, to those left behind or fleeing. […]

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